To hate the body positive movement

[Raven88]

I used to believe in it until I was diagnosed as pre diabetic. Genetically I gain weight easily and I comfort ate.

Since Boxing Day I have been eating healthy and started exercising and I've lost weight. But I've also become healthy. I used to be in constant pain and tired all the time but that changed as soon as I took charge.

It scares me that they are leading people down a dangerous path by promoting an unhealthy lifestyle.

What happened to me.

I lost 10 stone 16 years ago.. I got gallstones and it got so bad i couldnt eat SOLID food. i went through months and months of excrutiating pain and A + E admission. In and out of A + E for TEN MONTHS. then doctors coming to my home to give me morphine injections whenever i had an attack . Finally a doctor prescribed me morphine pills which melted under the tongue that i took every time i had an attack. First attack was 3 July 2002 Scan was on 19 Dec 2002 after months of A + E admissions . Early Feb 2003 i got a letter telling me id have to wait for ANOTHER YEAR. It was only after a private consultation with a surgeon and then another admission to hospital and an NHS appointment with the same surgeon that my op was promised within 6 weeks It was done 5 weeks later on 28 April 2003.id lost 8 stone by the time i had my op. The surgeon and two doctors told me it was caused by losing weight too fast. (slimming world) The pain was excrutiating and the first attack appeared after id lost nearly 4 stone. Back then i had no idea fast weight loss could cause gallstones I was losing a stone a month and whenever i did try to slow it down i either stayed the same or gained.

I actually did seriously consider suicide especially after i got the letter telling me id have to wait ANOTHER YEAR. I thought it was beyond cruel especially when id lost the weight by myself with willpower.

i believe due to mixing tramadol with as many over the counter drugs as i could in the early months to stop the pain i have been left with long term issues and its also left a bitter taste in the mouth TBH. Im grateful for the NHS but i was in so much pain i was thinking of overdosing (which i was bloody close to anyway) i also think the fact i won Class Slimmer of the Year and started to appear in our local papers Maybe that was a factor in me getting the op sooner( than that awful letter said i would) but i shall never know.

@Raven88 you're getting a bit of a hard time here op, but I get what you're saying. Emotional/binge eaters don't need a green card to eat themselves to death (I speak as one). That teeny tiny part of our brain that thinks that we should have a binge will run a mile with the body positive 'movement'. After all, it's easier to 'love yourself as you are' than actually tackle the web of emotional crap and work your arse off to change things in a bid not to die from obesity related illness.

Let's all be honest here, no size 14 girl is blogging or posting on insta like 'body positive y'all' and actually making anyone feel that way, as they're in perfect proportion unlike the majority of women. It's the likes of Tess Holiday for example, who are pretending that it's fine to be morbidly obese, cause, you know, body positive.

Everyone is quite clear that it's not ok to be anorexic and will say so without hesitation. But the other way around, it's taboo and you get all the 'oh so fat people should hate themselves should they??' Well no, they shouldn't. But they probably do. Which is why the diet industry is booming and raking billions.

Raven88 an yet, there is an Obese Nurse on every ward. I've spent the last three years in and out of Hospital, to different Departments and three different Hospitals. There are Obese Nurses working 12 hour shifts on their feet. A lot of the other Staff are also Obese. A few of the World renown Consultants, that I've seen is very overweight.That dismisses the 'stupid and lazy' tag given.

I love these posts.

“I used to agree but I’m not fat anymore so now I think it’s stupid and I no longer like fat people”

Perhaps fat people wouldn't hate themselves so much if thinner people didn't feel the need to be so openly vocal about other peoples fatness.

Nothing more sanctimonious than a reformed fatty. Right up there with ex smokers.

@Raven88

And did that help? How come it took you so many years to finally get on your health ride(only when threatened with a possible illness)?

Frantically there are a few ppl on Reddit who think that what youve described is the attitude that i should have.

And because i dont a couple of them have wrongfully assumed that i must have put all the weight back on.

john I am over 40. WS morbidly obese until a month ago. My fitbit tells me I walk 150 to 200 miles a month.
I swim lengths.
I can send over and wipe my arse thank you.
The only thing I can't do is run far but I am working on that.
When I feel positive I lose weight.
When I feel fed up I comfort eat.

Birds

@BastardMs it's not fat bashing it's being honest with people. I'm still overweight and I have a lot of work to do. The people who told me I needed to get healthy have helped more than people who tell me I'm fine the way I am.

Right. So you insult yourself in the mirror every morning and thrash your horrible body with twigs, do you? No, I didn’t think so.

I’m not sure you’ve understood the point of the positivity.

@RebelRogue It did help because I knew I had to watch what I ate but I also comfort ate which cancelled it out. It's not a possible illness I have pre diabetes which means I will be diabetic in the future. I've always been cautious about calories but my weight has shot up when I started on HRT.

im 45 im dreading the bloody menopause and going by the state of my cycle im close to it.

Should I hate myself? Would that ease your life?

I see the point you are making OP, however hashed of a job you are making of it, but there is something to be said of a reformed fatty that becomes rather sanctimonious about their new way of living.

@Piesandprosecco that's a bit of a stretch.

Oh is it? Sorry I wasn't sure. So I can love myself but only if I keep it quiet?

Sneak buy a shapeless size 20 from Evans then wear only that. Buy a sausage roll for lunch but eat it on the park bench from a brown paper bag?

Just trying to find the acceptable rules here...

@HelenaDove you'll be glad to know they've now reduced that length of time down to about 4 months. But only if you're lucky enough to pay private for the MRI scans to make sure you don't need an ERCP or whatever, have the consultant surgeon's secretary on speed dial every time you're in A&E - just to tell her that yes, you're being admitted AGAIN, and fight tooth and nail for 18hrs a day to bring it forward. Otherwise they would have only done my surgery a few months ago. I was living on 3 boiled potatos a day blended down with some water porridge and beans.

I know exactly what you went through. Almost a year on and I'm now battling the NHS for treatment for PTSD because of it. They do not take it seriously at all. I nearly murdered an A&E doctor for trying to give me a paracetamol drip for the 3rd time in 2 weeks when I was writhing and crawling across the A&E floor vomiting and begging someone for help. This was 2 or 3 times weekly.

When they removed my gallbladder it popped like a flimsy balloon and split in slow motion, as it was so damaged and they spent hours cleaning up the bile and stones from my insides too. Then they woke me up from surgery without any level of pain relief 'in error'. I came round screaming and fighting (ptsd response) and was in so much pain I pissed myself and squeezed the nurses hand so hard while they restained me that I broke her skin.

I now have life long gastro side effects and mental and physical scars. The stones came from the Exante diet and pregnancy.

Never fucking again.

Romeo im sorry to hear youve been through it too.

Even now years later i can remember the pain. i was living on water biscuits and tuna. Absolute hell.

So a lifetime of watching what you eat and calorie counting followed by pre diabetes and weight gain and more watching what you eat and calorie counting?

Yeah I don't see that as happiness,but what do I know? I'm fat...

"Had anyone ever looked at a fat person and thought "Cor, I'd love to look like that!!""

I have with some fat people, yes. When the fat is well proportioned if you know what I mean e.g. Nigella Lawson pre weight loss. The women in the Simply Be adverts. It's silly because I put on weight on my face so I know I'd look really awful at that size.

@helenadove I had my 3rd attack during Labour. They sent me home as I 'wasn't in enough pain'. We're sueing. Not surprisingly.

Labour pain AND a gallstone attack at the same time. JESUS WEPT

"her figure is still of a certain, very difficult to achieve 'type' - in that she has a small waist, massive boobs and bum etc. The perfect hourglass, scaled up.
Which is just as achievable for most women as a size zero model figure.."

It's LESS achievable. At least you can starve yourself to be a size zero, there's no way I know of to turn yourself into an hourglass figure. The MP who said that was heavily criticised.